Tag Archives: Baby dinosaurs will forever be the death of me

Well, the hype has officially begun– filming for Jurassic World 2 has begun in England, in the Langley Business Centre:

Considering the story of the movie will likely take place mostly on the mainland, this set could be used for way more scenarios than just someone’s house before they leave for Isla Nublar, so we don’t really have a definite answer for what exactly the Business Centre will have to do with the plot; it looks too small to be a dino-cloning facility or anything, but who knows? That’s the only real JW news we’ve gotten this week (besides more casting and a couple of character names) except of course for this:

That was posted by Colin Trevorrow on Twitter with the caption “Walking in giant footsteps. #JW2” and I’d venture to guess that the little girl pictured is Lucy (although, since she hasn’t even been cast yet as far as we know, it’s probably just a Lucy stand-in). Whether this scene actually appears in the movie or not (remember that photo of the East Dock sign that he tweeted early in JW’s filming?) it’s a gorgeous photo and got me very, very excited for what’s to come.

Since that’s about all the news there is to report on, I thought I’d do something fun this time, so here’s an informative blog post from a different Raptor Dash in a slightly different time in a different universe– one that has a lot more dinosaurs in it.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the exciting and adorable world of InGen Pygmy Triceratops™ ownership! Whether you’re only considering adopting one of these little Cretaceous cuties or you’re already a proud owner who’s looking for some tips, I’m glad you’ve decided to look to me for advice (instead of an unapproved third-party source). Although my blog may receive a small amount of funding from the InGen Corporation, you can count on me to impartially show you the ins and outs of how to properly care for the unique pet that’s now a part of your life.

The InGen Corporation is devoted to satisfying all of the companies and people that benefit from its services, and after the regrettable Jurassic World Incident, it made a concentrated effort to use its amazing genetic technology to improve the world around us. In addition to the giant ceratopsians that plow the fields that grow your food, the docile stegosaurs you see in zoos, the velociraptors that serve as the next step in the United States’ military technologies and more, InGen also developed something much more domestic and certainly much cuter– a line of pet miniature dinosaurs that never get big, can never be dangerous and never stop being precious! Pygmy Iguanadons™, Pygmy Ankylosaurs™, Pygmy Stegoceratops™ and Pygmy Paralophosaurs™ are available for purchase at any pet store near you, but my favorites of the line are the Pygmy Triceratops™; I love them so much that I adopted three, and today they’re happy to help me show you how to take proper care of your new little trike! Let’s meet the gang!

On the far left is Jasper, a sweet little girl with a shy side who loves to cuddle and take long naps. Then there’s Sahara– as you can tell, she’s the playful one! Finally there’s Orion, who’s the strong and silent type but still gets excited enough to chase a butterfly every once in a while! It’s highly advisable to adopt at least two at a time, as Triceratops have always been herding animals and will get lonely if they’re left alone at home for too long; two isn’t small enough to form your own cute little herd, though, so the more the merrier. These three are all babies, so they’re tiny and cute as buttons, but I won’t have to worry about them taking up too much space in my dorm room when they get older: the full size of a Pygmy Triceratops™ is about a foot and a half tall (0.5 m) and less than three feet long (1 m). They’ll always have plenty of room to run and play!

It’s very important to only feed your Pygmy Triceratops™ with certified InGen Health Blend Baby Triceratops Chow™. This special food was engineered specifically for the genetically-engineered bodies of little Pygmy Triceratops™and provides them with all the nutrients they need in their diet. Look how eager Orion is for dinner time! You can choose to feed them separate meals like you would a cat or dog, but Triceratops were grazing herbivores back in Cretaceous times, and their modern reincarnations still have traces of that instinct. Therefore it might make your little pets happy if you purchased a small trough or spread the food out among several paper plates throughout the house, allowing your Pygmy Triceratops™ to munch whenever they please. Remember to feed them about half to three-quarters of a cup of food per day– you don’t want them getting too chubby!

If your trike’s been good and deserves a special treat, give them some Ingen Pygmy Triceratops YumYum Pellets™! Made from sweet-tasting fruit, your little ones will love them! Just make sure you give them out equally– you can see how eager my babies are to get at them.

The only thing Pygmy Triceratops™ love more than treat time is playtime! They’re not the most active animals– pick up a Pygmy Paralophosaur™ if you want a dino that’ll run and play with you every day– but they certainly love to hug and bat around their stuffed animals. Jasper and Orion love their stuffed penguin because of how soft (and easy to chew) it is, and Sahara is enamored with the stuffed triceratops that my friend Alex bought me when she visited Jurassic World a few years ago. As you can see, their favorite place to play is on the carpet, probably because its texture reminds them of grass; I would recommend putting down rugs or carpets throughout your home, or keeping your trikes in a carpeted “safe room”if you’re worried about them wandering around and causing trouble when you’re not home.

Since this is only the first generation of InGen Pygmy Dinosaurs™, there are still a few teeny little “bugs” that need to be worked out. In the Pygmy Triceratops’™ case, it’s that their herding instinct may be just a bit too strong. As you can see, Sahara is very attached to this stuffed trike and refuses to let it go when play time is over. Judging by the way she clings to it, she probably thinks it’s another member of her herd, or perhaps even her mother. The next iteration of Pygmy Dinosaurs™ most likely won’t have issues like this, but until then, consider giving your pets toys that don’t resemble Triceratops.

Instead, give them toys that were specifically made to be safe and fun, as well as teaching your Pygmy Triceratops’™ growing brains! InGen now makes Pygmy Dinosaur SafeToys™, which are fun for your little angels to chew on and are made to look like other herbivorous dinosaurs from the ancient times of the original Triceratops. This brown one is brand new; Orion is sniffing at it with interest, deciding if he likes it more than the red one that he’ll contentedly chew on for hours if I let him. Of course, these are far from the only toys from InGen that your little dino will love to play with. Just look how happy my babies were to see the brand-new Stegoceratops™ toy from the Hybrids line, designed to teach dinosaurs and owners alike about the marvelous new species developed in InGen’s labs:

Playing with toys is far from the only way to entertain your Pygmy Triceratops™. They love to be carried outside for walks and romps in the grass! Here’s Jasper admiring (and trying to munch on) some pansies:

It’s important to be careful when taking your Pygmy Triceratops™ outdoors. If they eat anything but InGen’s special food, they’ll get sick, but they don’t know that, so be sure to keep a close eye on your trikes and keep them away from any plants that they might try to snack on.

Another important thing to note about all Pygmy Dinosaurs™ is that they have a strong aversion to cold weather and vastly prefer warm environments, just like their ancestors; this is why they should spend most of their time in a temperature-regulated indoor environment. Jasper and I came across some snow on our walk, and she refused to go anywhere near it. For those of you who live in cold areas but still want a prehistoric pet of your own, head to your local pet store this fall and adopt an InGen Pygmy Woolly Mammoth™!

After your little ones are all tuckered out from their outdoor adventure, or if you just need to keep them entertained for half an hour, they’ll love watching television, especially cheery children’s shows. Mine always show a lot of interest when I put Dinosaur Train on for them, but that’s probably more because of the bright colors and funny noises than the fact that it’s about dinosaurs.

At the end of their fun day, give your Pygmy Triceratops™ a nice warm bed to sleep in and a couple of soft toys for them to cuddle with. Because of their nesting instincts, mine love it when I make them a soft, cushy place for them to sink into, usually out of a bathrobe or soft towel. When it’s time to go to sleep, tuck them into their special little sleeping place…

…and don’t be surprised when they come to your bed anyway, impatiently mooing until you let them go to sleep cuddled up next to you. You are their beloved owner after all, and since you take such good care of your Pygmy Triceratops™, they want to give you all their love and affection to say thanks.

Thank you for reading, and I hope my guide helps you to have an amazing time with your wonderful new pet! Join me next week for an inside look at the Oviraptors that are being genetically engineered to be a tastier and more ethical substitute for poultry, and the week after that, when I look at and debunk the most popular Jurassic World conspiracy theories!

The second Jurassic World movie, currently called Ancient Futures, is set to start production in February. But even two months before anything starts, news is starting to trickle in, beginning with the movie’s casting! Of course Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt and BD Wong will be returning, but we recently got the addition of Justice Smith, who you might recognize from Paper Towns.

As you can see, he looks like a young Ian Malcolm, and I’d be endlessly thrilled if he turned out to be Ian’s son (maybe Kelly’s brother). According to Chris Pugh on Twitter and dance2nite on the JP Portal Forums, “He is reportedly playing a young scientist/system’s architect named “Clint” who who gets roped into being hired by Masrani Global & hitting a field exercise against his own intuition along with Claire & Owen.” Whether this is true or not, Clint has the potential to be a very, very interesting character– he sounds a bit like Lowery with a little more action thrown in. Toby Jones and Rafe Spall are in talks to join the movie as well, and auditions for the major role of Lucy have reportedly come to a close. Soon enough, we’ll have a near-complete cast list, and hopefully more character details will come out soon after. I’m incredibly hyped for filming to begin and to get back into the cycle of news and speculation that made all of our lives so interesting during the leadup to the first JW! I’m also excited for everyone who joined the fandom after JW came out; they get to experience the excitement of waiting for a new movie for themselves. All of us are going to have such a blast over the next year and a half.

But just as the first inklings of the new movie came out, we also got an unexpected glimpse at the beginning of the trilogy– a part of it that almost happened but never came to be. Everyone lamented the missed opportunity when concept art for the planned Jurassic Park animated series came out, and while we’ll never get to see an actual episode of it, now we know how the series would’ve gone and what might have been. A synopsis of each episode of the planned first season was recently released, which was previously only available to our dad Steven Spielberg and a few select others, but was found and transcribed for us by Chris Pugh of Jurassic Outpost. Even though only the basic concepts of the episodes are written out, the outline is riveting and full of possibilities; it’s too long of a document for me to inspect piece by piece, so read it first, and I’ll cover the parts that intrigued me the most.

The concept art for Hammond in this series made him look much more like the formidable, cunning, decidedly less grandfather-like version of him from the original novel. This series seems to stick with that interpretation. Movie Hammond was moved by the loss of life and saw the error of his ways, but here he just bounces back and immediately begins amending his scheme, and as we see later, he manipulates both the government and the people who trust him to do so. Another noteworthy thing here is the idea that the island’s population wouldn’t survive with the herbivore-to-carnivore ratio that it had when he left it; that’s an idea that was only officially introduced to the series two years later in the second novel. This outline holds a lot of ideas that either influenced or predicted things that would happen later in the series, in both the novels and movies.

In this show about dinosaur theme parks and smuggling prehistoric lizards through airport security (more on that later) this is the part that I find the least plausible. The script says that the original trio has their reservations and is haunted by what happened at the park, but Hammond still convinces them to go back and live on the island. Hammond is shown to be a pretty convincing guy when he manipulates people, and Alan and Ellie are still in love with dinosaurs deep down and might be swayed, but never in a million years do I see Ian being convinced to do this. It would take some pretty clever writing to make that believable.

There’s two Lost World precursors here for the price of one: the idea of Dino Wranglers with special vehicles for dinosaur capture (definitely not just to sell toys or anything, of course not) and the last name Burke, which ended up being given to Richard Burke in the second movie. I wonder if Linda Lee would’ve also been a veiled dig at Robert Bakker, and if she and Richard would’ve been related.

Episodes 6 through 16 deal largely with a subplot about BioSyn and its competing theme park, DinoWorld, whose structure and ultimate demise bear a striking resemblance to Jurassic World. I wonder if the fourth movie would still have had the plot that it did if this series had aired and evidence of a park exactly like it ending in disaster had existed in canon?

The plots of these episodes are so similar to the first act of the Lost World movie that it’s almost certain that the scripts and outline for this series influenced the movie’s plot, possibly as well as the second novel. A rival team of dinosaur hunters, planning to steal animals from the island to start their own theme park and ultimately succeeding, land on the island and compete with Hammond’s group; two young kids stow away, and the adults try to get them off the island but fail; and several other subtle similarities. I’d bet money that Michael Crichton was one of the people authorized to read this outline and took a few ideas from it, and that Spielberg did the same.

An aviary was present in the original novel, and the idea of having aquatic predators in the park was probably tossed around since the beginning, so I can’t really say that this predicted or influenced the aviary scene in JP3 or the mosasaur in JW. I only brought this up because of what a tragedy it is that we almost didn’t have to wait 22 years to see a mosasaur in the franchise. We could’ve had high-quality Kenner mosasaur toys. The queen could’ve ruled our hearts with fear for so much longer.

But then again, I wouldn’t have had the chance to see this in a movie theater and scream myself deaf.

I love angst almost as much as I love Ian Malcolm, so naturally this would interest me, but this would also be a really interesting bit of character development to see play out. I would definitely read a fanfiction that novelized this outline, but I’d also love a story about Ian surrounding himself with computers to hide from the fact that he’s surrounded by the dinosaurs from his nightmares, working on a system he knows is doomed to fail, losing more and more hope every day as he calculates exactly how small the potential for success and survival is.

Actually, maybe it’s a good thing that this show never aired, because these babies are all I would ever talk, think or write about. If you think I’m too obsessed with baby dinosaurs as it is, imagine if there had been episodes entirely about several species of hatchlings being born and played with.

Alas, this is all I have to keep me awake at night.

This show wasn’t meant to be a Saturday morning kids’ cartoon, but Hammond’s characterization being the same as it was in the book, combined with the presence of the compies that killed him in said book, sets the stage for the kind of gruesome death that I would be surprised to see even in a cartoon from the less-sensitive ‘9os.

In true novel fashion, the show would’ve put its plot on hold for a full episode about philosophy. And I can see Alan and Ellie pondering these things, but Ian would promptly answer all of these questions with “Hell no.”

After dinosaurs from DinoWorld escape to the mainland and start killing people in villages, a nod to the first novel, the trio looks over the ruins of the park. This sounds like a precursor to the TLW and JP3 scenes in the abandoned worker’s villages on Isla Sorna, but it also sounds like an interesting idea for a scene in the beginning of the next JW movie. Trevorrow has said that the next film won’t be set on an island, but that doesn’t mean our heroes or the military couldn’t have a quick scene where they walked through the abandoned and overgrown Main Street, possibly being attacked by a raptor pack afterward as a warning to all who would dare infringe on Rexy’s territory. It wouldn’t be essential to the plot, but it could tie the second movie in with the first in the new trilogy, and it’d be a visual treat if done right.

Here’s yet another scene that could’ve lent ideas to both TLW and JW. Is it possible that Trevorrow looked over this outline a couple of years ago? It wouldn’t be a bad thing if he had; it would actually be heartwarming to know that the true inspiration for JW had come from the very beginning of the franchise, and that the new trilogy was partly meant to show us concepts from this series that we didn’t get to see.

After several interesting descriptions of dinosaur attacks, it’s pretty disappointing and seems tacked-on to have that story arc end with this. It also seems impossible– “six or seven young T. rexes, about fifty raptors, a couple of deadly dilophosaurs” all got caught by by a little group of T. Rex Turners, and not a single one of them got gored or met the business end of a sickle claw? The end of the series is well-done, but it would be better to put that off for a little while in favor of a more plausible conclusion to the dinosaurs-on-the-mainland arc.

The implications of rare and exotic dinosaurs escaping to the mainland are somewhat explored here, and hopefully they’re also shown in the next JW movie– it’s a concept that the fandom has speculated on for a long, long time. Also, sneaking a baby dinosaur through the airport is 100% something I would do and risk jail time for.

Other than the baby dinosaur shenanigans, this is the part that most makes me regret that this series never aired. Even from the sparse description here, there’s so much emotion and so many conflicting ideas– the audience, the kids and the original trio all feel somewhat betrayed by the park opening to the public despite what happened in the movie, but it’s also thrilling to see Hammond’s dream come true and a fantastic dinosaur park open to the world. In other words, it’s exactly the way we all felt when it was first announced that JW would feature a fully operational dinosaur theme park. There’s no doubt that this would lead to a very interesting second season. Ian, Alan and Ellie might begin actively working against the park if they weren’t forced under contract to continue working with it. Dodgson might make another attempt to create his own park. When the park started up, Hammond might find that he hadn’t taken as many necessary safety measures as he thought he had, and guests might end up getting eaten sooner rather than later. This series and its ending were so full of possibilities, and it’s a crying shame that this is likely all we’ll ever see of it.

I’m sure I’m with the majority of the fandom when I say I’d give an arm and a leg to see this series produced, or at least watch the trailer that exists in some hidden archive somewhere. If the show had been made, the rest of the franchise might have been drastically different; The Lost World might’ve had a different plot, and Jurassic World would likely have been handled far, far differently because of this show’s example of what an operational dinosaur park would likely look like. If Jurassic World ever gets its own TV series, animated or live-action, I hope it takes a few notes from the JP cartoon that never was.

If you want more Jurassic World while we all gear up for the second movie in the trilogy, take a look at the portfolio of the graphic artist for JW, Ellen Lampl! Cosplayers should take advantage of the Henry Wu name badge. This, of course, is my favorite part:

Eternal thanks to Mike Jenkins for showing me this beautiful look into the more minute details of Jurassic World!

Jurassic World: The Exhibition has finally had its grand opening in Melbourne, Australia! It looks every bit as beautiful and well-put-together as we had dreamed it would be. Since this is the fist day it’s open, not many pictures are available; I’ll add photos as they come in. In the meantime, Thomas Schmitz on Facebook was so kind as to take a few photos of the highlights. Let’s take a look!

The gate itself looks great, but the mountain scenery behind it looks even better. If I walked through this, I think I’d start crying instantly, but then again that’s true for basically everything in the exhibition.

This doesn’t look like any specific room from the Hammond Creation Lab in the movie– it appears to be a DNA extraction room crossed with a hatchery area– so it isn’t 100% movie-accurate, but regardless, it looks great. The aesthetic they have going with the wall of amber looks great; it reminds me of the wall of dire wolf skulls at the La Brea Tar Pits. There seems to be some kind of educational video on the amber extraction process playing, as well as something starring Henry Wu or at least some other geneticist in a black turtleneck. If these are exhibit-exclusive and not just reruns of the promotional videos that were released through RaptorPass, it would be great if someone could videotape them. I doubt they’d give too many mind-blowing insights, but they’re still a part of canon.

And the QR code eggs, which so kindly blessed us with the cover of God Creates Dinosaurs, are there as well! It looks like you can toggle with the settings on the incubator or, more likely, look at the vital signs of the tiny dinosaurs within. I don’t know if it’s possible to take X-rays and thermal scans of the eggs in order to determine their inhabitants (like you can at the Discovery Center in the JP Orlando theme park) but since this is appears to be a video screen, it seems like it could be and I hope it is.

I’m typing this after a 20-minute break, during which I curled up in the corner, clutched my pillow to my chest and screeched several variations of “LOOK AT THEIR SLEEPY LITTLE FACES! PRECIOUS LITTLE MUFFINS” into it until I could type coherent sentences again. But I’m not the only one who thinks this is the cutest thing ever, right? Look at their chubby little cheeks, and the happy little smiles on their faces, and their teeny-tiny noses… ahem, sorry, got carried away there. I don’t know if these are animatronics; they probably aren’t, and I should probably be glad for that fact because if one of them yawned or started moving around in their sleep, I would instantly drop dead on the spot. If any of you happens to go to the exhibition, if you send me a picture of these little guys, I will love you forever and always.

This looks more like an informational room than anything else, and it probably doesn’t tell us anything that the website doesn’t already. Regardless, someone should probably photograph the placards on the walls anyway, just in case. (Shoutout to the Jurassic Park Legacy encyclopedia staff, by the way. Those guys really have their documenting cut out for them with this thing.)

But nobody goes to a Jurassic World experience just to read facts about mosasaurs and look at probably-fake dinosaur leg bones. Let’s see some animatronics!

We’ve seen this Rexy animatronic before, but in her environment and with that creepy red lighting, she looks a million times better. Her face also appears to have been adjusted a bit since she was shown off at the announcement of the exhibit, so now she looks a lot more accurate. The idea of this area is that you’re in the T. Rex Kingdom (as you can see by the backdrop) watching her eat her afternoon meal. From this angle, at least, it really feels like you’re watching an actual T. rex make a kill.

I haven’t seen enough of it to know for sure, but the I. rex looks almost as good as the T. rex, at least in this picture. I think it’s something about the texture of her face, but she just looks a little more… I don’t know, fake. It’s also a huge missed opportunity that they put her in the middle of a generic jungle (unless they’re recreating the ACU scene, which again, I have no way of knowing) instead of in a recreation of her pen. For what it is, though, this doesn’t look bad at all. Stan Winston and his team obviously put a huge amount of work into this, and it shows. Nothing we’ve seen so far has been shabby; “not so good” here translates to “slightly less than perfect”.

This pachyrhinosaurus, on the other hand, looks absolutely fantastic. I don’t know what the context for this is (by the mountains in the background, I’m guessing they’re in the Restricted Zone, although it could easily be the Gentle Giants Petting Zoo) but it stands so well on its own that it would look just fine even against a bare wall. The skin texture is gorgeous, the eyes make it look like it’s really alive, I want nothing more in this world than to snuggle the baby (who, by the way, looks like Patchi from Walking with Dinosaurs: The Movie Mistake)– I could go on all day about what a good job this is. I absolutely can’t wait to see these two moving. Also, I feel this is relevant:

I know it’s just the angle of the picture, but the face on this apatosaur looks like a grinning zombie and it’s legitimately scaring me. I’m not kidding, it looks like something from one of those Five Nights at Freddy’s games and I’m uncomfortable looking at it for too long.

“IT’S ME.”

But disregarding the scary face, the rest of it looks great. The foliage under this guy really makes it feel like you’re in the tree scene from the first movie; if the animatronic sneezes every once in a while, it’ll be perfect. If it ducks its head down to look at visitors on the ground and/or grabs leaves in its mouth, then all the better. If it weren’t for the horrifying expression, this would be downright magical.

Finally, in presumably the same jungle set as the I. rex, we have a red parasaurolophus who looks downright pissed that we dared to wander onto its turf.

The skin also looks great on this one, as well as the design; it’s not what we saw in JW, but in a good way, since brown dinosaur after brown dinosaur was bound to get boring after a while. I don’t know if this is just an animatronic head or if the rest of its body is visible as well, but I hope it’s the latter, because this looks amazing.

That’s all we have for now, but more and more people will be visiting the exhibition in the coming days, so I’ll have lots more pictures to show you and screech over. Stay tuned!

Update: Here’s a video of the I. rex animatronic. I was wrong about this one– she looks fantastic! It amazes me how realistic her skin and movements are, and how she has such a full range of motion (it’s incredibly cool how she can rear up like that and swing around; I haven’t seen many animatronics that could do that realistically). If there’s one thing I don’t like about it, I’d say it’s the stiff arms, but given how well-done the rest of her is, it’s not worth complaining over.

An amazing person named Andrew Miller posted a video showing the entirety of the exhibition! You really should watch it, because screenshots can’t do the works of art that are these animatronics justice, and this is something that really needs to be seen as a full experience, even if it’s just secondhand. But I can definitely do my best to capture the highlights.

You enter after a short video simulating a boat ride to Nublar, which includes an informational video about the park’s dinosaurs and the full JurassicWorld.com experience on the sidebar there. I gotta admit, this is a pretty clever idea; if I had designed the exhibition, I’d probably just have started with the JW gate.

I’m disappointed in the fact that the informational sidebar doesn’t show how big the island is. Like, how many pounds.

After a few more minutes of video, an attendant opens a door and you’re ushered through the gates of Jurassic World, immediately to see this:

Awesome! I was hoping it would eat leaves like a real apatosaur! This is just one of the little touches that I like the most about this exhibition– the artists behind it took the time to make us feel like we’re looking at actual animals in their environments, not just monsters standing around waiting to roar at us; the latter is a problem that theme park animatronics (unfortunately, this includes the JP ride) and the other dinosaur animatronic exhibition out right now have. With things like showing the animals eating and ignoring us, it feels like we’re actually among living creatures, and that makes it all the more magical.

So that picture earlier was just a bad angle on a good puppet, right? The apatosaur (which looks much more like a JP mamenchisaur, if you ask me) can’t be that freaky-looking in real– ohhhh boy.

I’d like to humbly suggest a nickname: “Scary Patty”.

Huh. Who ever thought that, out of a gallery of predatory dinosaurs, the herbivore would be the one that worried me the most. I mean, its movements and construction are great, but that face is terrifying. And that’s not even to mention that there’s no semblance of a body attached to this. It’s a giant neck protruding from the floor.

Let’s… let’s just move on.

Next is something genuinely adorable and sweet– the parasaur is close enough to interact with people, blinking its eyes, sniffing curiously at them, and tilting its head like a big scaly pug. (I should note that all the dinosaurs have these abilities and realistic facial expressions– this one just puts them to the best use.) It really looks like you’re standing in front of a gentle, curious animal. No wonder the little kid in this video is so happy.

Next is the Pachyrhinosaur family, situated in the Gentle Giants Petting Zoo! I’m not entirely sure what that plastic sheet behind them is supposed to be for, but I stand by my assertion that they’d look good next to anything.

The mother growl-honks, rears her head and generally makes it known that visitors aren’t welcome near her baby–

–and then leans her head in to nuzzle it. You know what, this is too precious for me to gawk at. You go, little pachyrhinosaur family. Your mother-daughter love is too pure for this world.

After our videographer takes a couple of minutes to watch his friends pose in front of the gates and to capture the ambience of a room full of people on their smartphones, a sign in front of the pachys invites us to “touch the dino dung”…

Yeah, yeah, go ahead and say it.

…and then we’re on to the Creation Lab!

There’s a security camera display showing a couple of famous locales from the movie (the jungle trail that the ACU drove down, the gate that the boys drove through in the old Jeep) but those aren’t particularly exciting. Especially not when there’s a real amber extractor!

It doesn’t appear to do anything, but it’s still pretty awesome to see. Also, I was wrong– the video next to it doesn’t star Wu. It just shows a woman in a blue scarf, who Lord Kristine will probably have an entire backstory and 3-story anthology for by the end of the week.

There’s no part of the hatchery that needs to be shown that we haven’t already seen in previous photos, so there’s really no need to screencap it. All that needs to be said is that there’s still no way to tell exactly what it is that the video screens in front of the incubators do; hopefully someone who visits in the coming weeks will be able to tell us.

I promise I’m gonna be okay in a little while but the one in the middle lifts up its little head and yawns in its sleep and this is just a really important moment for me and it’s a little hard to take all of this in at once so give me a moment please thank you so much.

“The Bad OC Creation Station”

We see the entrance to Wu’s lab (the door doesn’t open) and then an area where you can make your own dinosaur. Encouraging people to take perfectly good dinosaur designs and slap Day-Glo colors and patterns on them– there are subtler ways to get people to do your job for you, Hasbro.

After this, you’re crowded into a room where you’re shown an informational video of facts about Tyrannosaurus Rex (starring the same woman in the blue scarf) after which an awesome door folds up and you enter the T. Rex Kingdom. Lightning flashes, and when you causally glance to your side through the fence:

A very happy, very minor heart attack.

Regardless of the extremely awesome setting and context, this animatronic isn’t as good as it could have been. I can see how it looks sort of like Rexy, and it’s not a bad tyrannosaur on its own at all, but something happened behind the scenes that made this look way differently than it was probably intended to.

But then I see it from different angles and begin to think differently. This could be a Jurassic Jungle Boat Ride-style piece of crap, and I’d still be excited to be there to see it, because the surrounding area really feels like you’re right there with the queen of Isla Nublar.

Next, Rexy does something that I have to say I was 100% not expecting– there’s a car on one end of her pen, and she walks right over to it, as casually and film-accurately as can be. In case you don’t know much about animatronics, ones that can walk on their own are a huge deal and they aren’t easy to make in any capacity. Lucky the Dinosaur, the first-ever free-roaming animatronic, was only built a few years ago and he’s pretty much alone in his field. If the wizards at this exhibition managed to make a free-roaming, enormous T. rex robot, then I’m completely, thoroughly in awe of them. (And also very, very terrified.) If she isn’t free-roaming, then I don’t want to know how she moves because the way she walks over to her visitors adds a dimension of magic that a stationary robot could never provide. If you ask me, this is the best part of the exhibit by far.

She’s not too happy about the intruder, and I don’t blame her. I can understand that handlers would need to drive jeeps into her pen in order to do routine maintenance and feed her, but if you’re dumb enough to leave your car in a T. rex pen, you deserve all the punctured tires and increased car insurance deductibles you get.

I should note that there was some kind of plot going on with the video that they showed before this scene, so there’s probably a story behind why that car is there. However, I was dumb enough to leave my headphones at home today, so I can’t tell you what that plot is. I’ll update and talk about it later.

For a couple of minutes, Rexy pokes at the car with her snout, roars angrily about it and repeats the process. It would’ve been nice to see her rip the thing apart– it could’ve disassembled and reassembled in a way similar to the special effects at Universal’s Earthquake ride– but that probably couldn’t have been done without damaging the animatronic, so I understand why it couldn’t happen. After letting us know just how pissed she is, she backs up (which is another engineering miracle if she’s free-roaming) and hangs out in her previous spot for a little while. She looks over the railing in a moment that would make me simultaneously pee in fear and squeal in joy:

And then… she walks forward and basically does exactly the same thing she just did, inspecting the truck and voicing her displeasure once again. If there’s not some kind of plot line going on here, I’m seriously scratching my head as to why they didn’t just have her poke at the truck for twice as long instead of making her walk back and forth like that. Being in captivity for that long must’ve made her really oddly repetitive.

I shouldn’t make an OCD joke, should I? Yeah, no, I won’t.

I have to admit, though, it is pretty hilarious to watch her try her hardest to menace that truck. She just gives it a teeny little poke with her snout, then rears up, roars loudly and looks around as if to say, “Did you idiots see that?” She’s trying to show us that she’s not to be messed with, but all I see is an old lady trying to assert dominance by spraying the kids who play on her lawn with a pressure hose. I know I’m supposed to be scared, and maybe if I were actually there I would be, but this is just too adorable.

That’s the end of Rexy’s part, and all in all, it’s the best part in my opinion and should’ve been saved for the end. The animatronic was so unbelievably realistic and the setting was so perfect that it could’ve been an attraction at Universal on its own. The only thing I’d have changed would be making her face a bit more movie-accurate, but they’re already 85% of the way there on that, so no complaints from me.

Next we go to the Gyrosphere Valley to meet a stego!

The gyropshere looks pretty cool (I can’t help but think it’s a missed opportunity not to let visitors take pictures in it) and the stego is pretty nice. Its grazing is very realistic and it looks like a real animal in still shots, don’t get me wrong, but something about it bothers me. Maybe it’s how the body looks unreasonably chubby even by JW’s standards, especially the legs, or how the tail only has a robotic back-and-forth motion and the rest of its body doesn’t appear to move much at all. It’s basically the same quality as a high-end theme park animatronic, which wouldn’t even be worth mentioning– and would even be a good thing– if visitors hadn’t just come from something as spectacular as the Rexy section. In other words, they didn’t drop the ball here, but they didn’t slam dunk it either.

So the animal just kind of stegos around for a little while, and then a bunch of red alerts go off and our blue-scarf lady shows up on the video monitors to tell us something. The stego starts panicking, but what does she see that we– oh holy crap.

What a clever reveal and, since I’m the type of person who’d be really freaked out to know that there’s been a giant dinosaur behind me for the entire time I’ve been in a room, a really creepy one too! The thing that strikes me the most is how fast this I. rex animatronic moves. Never in my life have I seen any robot, let alone a gigantic one, that ducks and dodges anywhere near as fast as this one does. It really makes you feel like there’s an actual killing machine dinosaur right in front of you. So what do you do when you see a murderous carnivore? You walk right towards it, of course!

When you get closer, it’s still really, really cool and scary, but the effect is dampened a little by the fact that I. rex’s arms are stuck out in front of her and stiff as boards. You would think just a little effort could’ve gone into that department, but considering how much work was obviously put into this one– she looks just as accurate as the animatronics used in the movie– I’m going to assume it was for some technical reason that the arms had to stay like that.

I seriously can’t overstate (and you’ll have to watch the video to see) how astoundingly fast she moves. She whips her head around and roars at a pace that, if I were there, would genuinely make me afraid that she was about to lean down and snap someone up in her jaws, or at the very least brush someone by accident. (At times, if you turn off the sound, it looks like she’s swaying her head to some fast-paced classical music.) Since she’s a hyperintelligent weapon of an animal, this was a really good choice to use that speed-up effect on.

She basically does the same thing Rexy did– finds a pattern and goes with it. She’ll duck her head down and lower her body, almost as if she’s falling asleep, and then she’ll rear up and go back into her spastic roaring like nothing just happened. This happens a good three or four times.

Aww, what a sleepy baby.

I should probably also note how close she gets to visitors. Like, this close:

If you go to the exhibition, touching the animatronics probably isn’t a good thing to be doing in general, since you’ll definitely be close enough to do so. However, you’re reading a blog written by someone who’s ran her fingers over a triceratops skull and brachiosaur tail bones in a museum when no one was looking, just for the experience. So, you know. You gotta do what you gotta do.

Lights flash and our heroine continues roaring and flailing– and that’s the end. I assume she just continues her tantrum for a little bit and then it’s onward to the gift shop. All things considered, I’m frankly blown away by how extraordinary this exhibition looks. The animatronics and set recreations are fantastic, the sets are well-done and immersive, and altogether it looks like the product of tons upon tons of hard work. I don’t know if or when this will go on a world tour, but if it comes anywhere near me, I’ll be the first to buy a ticket. I only have one word to summarize: Wow.

Yes, I wrote a Jurassic World fanfic (I mean, another) but I’m not the only one by far. There has been an absolute flood of JW fanfiction in the past couple of days, and nearly all of it is really, really great. I have my work cut out for me in the next Fanfics You Should Be Reading. In general news, Chris Pratt says he’s already signed on for the next movie, and Jurassic World had the third-biggest opening weekend of all time. So congratulations, guys– we made our mark on history. We threw our money at the movie and our voices were heard.

This is the sequel to Gentle Giants Petting Zoo, and it was written for CJCroen1393, who’s having his birthday today (I was wrong and it wasn’t yesterday, oops). Hope you enjoy it!

Really, feeding a baby triceratops is like feeding any other baby. Which means that they both completely refuse to eat when they’re supposed to.

“Come on, don’t you want just one bite?” Ian Malcolm offers the carrot to the little baby trike, holding it right under the animal’s nose. The trike doesn’t even glance down, continuing to stare blankly into Ian’s eyes like an oversized terrier. He tries to encourage the animal—one of the khaki-clad Gentle Giants Petting Zoo handlers told him earlier that carrots are their favorite treats—by snapping the vegetable into smaller pieces, but the baby chooses to nuzzle the back of his hand with its beak instead. Ian gives in, rubbing behind its frill like the handler said they liked, and the creature grunts with satisfaction and steps closer. “Yeah, I know the drill,” Ian says good-naturedly as the leathery baby shakes its head to get more scratches on its frill and rubs its cheek against his leg. “You’ll eat anytime except when I, ah, want you to, right?”

From a few feet away, little kids and tiny orthiniscian babies milling around her, Ian sees Sarah look up and give him a knowing smile. He gives her a sardonic look and returns his attention to the baby, which has nearly crawled up on his lap. He keeps scratching behind its frill and allows a little grin as he mumbles, “You’re just a big baby, huh? Don’t wanna eat your carrots just like any other kid?” It gives a soft snort in response, and though Ian would admittedly like to have it stick around, one of its handlers whistles and it perks up immediately. The trike jumps to its feet and bounds across the dusty, fenced-in enclosure on its stubby little legs, and Ian’s left to sit on the ground alone. After a moment, he takes the effort to get to his feet, shaking off the twinges in his left leg. That’s when he gets the first sign that something is wrong.

The first clue Ian gets is the bird’s unusual wings.

He glances up at the sky for a second, and his eyes just happen to focus in on a single bird, about fifty yards away from them. He stares at it idly, and begins to turn away when he notices a sudden strange quality about the animal. There’s something about it that’s distinctly un-birdlike.

“Honey, look,” he turns and says to Sarah nervously. “Look at that bird up there. There’s—there’s somethin’ weird about it.” His kneeling girlfriend, engrossed in a squirming baby apatosaur whose neck bones she’s trying to inspect, gives no response. “It’s engineered, Sarah. What did I tell you about—ah—they probably wouldn’t just stop at dinosaurs. Didn’t I tell you that?” The only answer he gets is the bob of Sarah’s curly red ponytail as she shakes her head.

“Wouldn’t just stop at dinosaurs,” he mutters to himself, staring back at the odd bird and squinting in the bright island sun. “Trying to repopulate their entire island ecosystem with their—their own brand of animals, the—” He stops suddenly when he sees the bird’s wings. There’s a strange translucent quality to them, the sun shining through both wings and illuminating them like stained-glass windows. “Sarah, look, the—the wings don’t have any feathers. What the hell kind of bird is that?”

“Ian, sit down and help hold this thing still for me,” she calls back.

The second clue he gets is the bird’s call.

The noise definitely comes from the strange animal circling in the sky; it’s as audible as the average hawk’s call, except it isn’t emanating from any kind of hawk. Ian immediately jumps a little when he hears it. There’s a strange undertone to it, something different about it that touches a nerve deep down in his mind. It sounds a bit like a crow’s warble and an eagle’s screech, mixed with a visceral, angry scream. “I know you heard that,” he says, turning back to Sarah and gesturing at the sky. “What does that sound like to you?”

Her response is to get up, stand face-to-face with him and matter-of-factly plop a squirming baby Gallimimus in his leather-jacketed arms. “Just stay in the moment, Ian,” she says, reaching forward to help as he struggles to keep the tiny animal from leaping to the ground. “We came here for a reason, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighs as Sarah helps the baby find a stable footing on his arm. As she gently runs her fingers over its tiny scales, the little animal’s amber eyes meet Ian’s, and it gives a contented little chirp.

The third clue is the rest of the bird’s flock.

The baby galli starts to enjoy Sarah’s petting, bobbing its tiny head up and down and flapping its little arms like a young bird trying to fly. As he tries his best to be an unmoving perch, Ian glances back up at the sky and almost jumps. Where a minute ago the sky was clear and cloudless, now it’s half-covered in shadow. Tiny black dots have begun to fill the bright blue horizon, and the dark cloud they form begins to block out the sun and shadow the ground. Except it’s not so much a cloud as it is a swarm. And as they get closer, Ian sees that the dots are birds.

“Sarah.” Ian doesn’t bother to keep his other arm still as he points at the growing cloud. “Sarah. Look.”

Sarah takes one last look at the baby and sets it on the ground. It dashes away to join the herd of other little gallis, and Sarah rises again, brushes her hair out of her face and says in a distinct tone, “Remember what you said to your therapist about—”

“No, th-that’s not it. Look.” Sarah raises one eyebrow and turns her head to look where Ian’s pointing. The mass of flying animals has gotten much, much closer in the past few seconds and the weird calls are beginning to fill the air, along with distinctly leathery flapping sounds. Ian and Sarah see the birds’ faces about a second apart and react instantaneously.

“Oh God,” Sarah says before she begins to back up, waving her arms around and screaming, “Get out! Get out of the way!” Some of the kids follow her instructions and dash over to the protective arms of their parents, but others remain crouched on the ground and only give her quizzical looks.

“Everybody move!” Ian shouts at the top of his lungs, running around blindly and only thinking about getting these kids out of the way. A few little children stand still, petrified by his and Sarah’s screaming, but some of the older kids grab the younger kids’ wrists and drag them out of the petting zoo area. As more and more visitors look up to see what they’re running from, they let out piercing screams and practically trample one another to get to the exit. A few handlers try to usher the kids out of the area and keep them calm, some handlers almost run over the crowd trying to get out ahead of everyone else and a few stay behind, attempting to keep the dinosaurs under control. Their attempts are useless; the babies already know about the danger and have begun to run around in sheer terror, bleating and kicking up clouds of dust as they stampede around in their little herds and try to find an exit. In less than a minute, the entire area becomes a swirling, chaotic mess and only Ian and Sarah remain near the far end of the enclosure, making sure all of the kids are getting out and shouting that the crowd is blocking the exit. Everyone needs to get out, but they can’t pile up on each other, if they can wait just another second–

The fourth clue shows that the flock is most definitely not comprised of birds.

It happens all at once. One enormous pteranodon swoops in and reaches right for Sarah with its talons, and then every single one of them is right there in the petting zoo, flapping their gigantic wings and screeching in a big, leathery blur. There are larger ones and smaller ones, but Ian doesn’t think to look too close; there are just so many of them and they’re everywhere. A smaller one lands on his head in a burst of white-hot pain. He shouts and smacks it away when its claws start to dig into his scalp. He tries to turn around and make it back to the exit, but he can’t see a thing; he can’t even look two feet to the side and see where Sarah is, there are so many pteranodons around him that they seem to make up an undulating solid that fills every last bit of space. Blindly, little claws scratching everywhere and wings smacking his face with each second, Ian lunges forward and claws at the air with his hands, fighting to move forward.

It’s like running through an overgrown jungle that’s dense with elephant ears or trying to run underwater, but somehow Ian makes it through the swarm and feels a larger hand grabbing his. He gropes around a little more and when he feels shoulders and other people, he lets out a wordless yell and a couple of heads turn. He’s finally made it to the gate and there are other people here, although not many. All the children are gone, he notes with relief, but three or four adults are running around wildly, grabbing baby dinosaurs and shoving past him to get them out of the enclosure. A blonde woman in a khaki handler’s uniform bumps into him and, without warning, shoves him to the ground right before an enormous pteranodon swoops over them with its claws outstretched. “Get the babies!” the woman yells right into his ear.

“Kids okay?” he yells back.

“Kids are fine, but the babies don’t know where to go! Either help us or run!” She gets back up—she’s got a baby galli tight in her arms—and dashes off.

It doesn’t take long for Ian to get his priorities in order. “Sarah!” he roars, but she’s nowhere to be seen. “Sarah! Follow my voice! Sarah!” The pteranodon flock is partially dissipated but still there—they must have left when the little kids did. The reptiles seem to be focusing their attentions on the dinosaur babies now. Some of the bigger pteranodons are trying their damndest to grab up the baby apatosaurs; a few feet away, one pterosaur digs its claws into an apatosaur’s neck and tries to pull it up, but the little animal grunts and yanks itself away. Some, though, are more successful—a dimorphodon flies right in front of Ian’s face, carrying a screeching baby gallimimus. Without thinking, Ian smacks the reptile away and yanks the baby out of its grip, leaning over and dropping the little animal back on the ground before looking around wildly to find Sarah.

He hears her before he sees her. Around the middle of the enclosure, he can faintly hear Sarah yelling, “Hey!” above the still-persistent flapping of wings. She’s got something small tucked under her arm—probably another little galli—and she’s jogging over to where the biggest pteranodon in the whole flock is trying to lift something. Ian squints to see it better, and sure enough, the gigantic flying beast has a brown baby triceratops encased in its talons. The littler animal, a saddle still attached to its back, squirms and wails as the larger one strains to lift it. Sarah makes her way directly under the pteranodon’s long wingspan and pulls her free arm back.

“Sarah, no!” Ian yells when he sees what she’s about to do, but it’s too late. Dropping the baby galli under her arm, Sarah lets out an angry shout and punches one of the pterandon’s wings with every ounce of strength she has. Instead of letting go of its prey, the pteranodon screeches in surprise and attempts to bat her away, managing to whack her across the cheek and leave a bloody mark. She hisses and leans back to punch it again, but her form isn’t so good and her punch only has minimal impact. Ian swats another dimorphodon and decides, to hell with it. He runs with a slight limp over to the middle of the enclosure, where the pteranodon is still struggling with the baby and Sarah has begun trying to pull the trike out of the reptile’s grip. He’s just about to pull her out of the way when an earsplitting BANG rings through the air. Something dark clouds his vision and he nearly falls over; beside him, he’s vaguely aware of a high screech and something hitting the ground with a sickening thump.

He hears, “Over here, get outta there!” somewhere in the distance through the ringing in his ears. Sarah grabs his shoulder—he wipes his eyes with his sleeve and sees that she has something wriggly and scaly-looking in her arms—and insists, “Come on, Ian, come on.” She lets go and he blindly follows her through the pen, and when they head out of the gate he sees what they’re running to.

A sandy-haired man, wearing a leather vest and holding a still-smoking hunting rifle, is waiting for them on an ATV with the engine running; a red-haired woman in filthy white clothes clings to him. When she notices they’ve stopped, she shakes the man’s shoulder and says urgently, “Owen, why are we stopping?”

“Sarah Harding?” The woman, Claire squints and looks at the both of them. “Are you Sarah Harding?”

“Yeah.” Sarah puts whatever she was carrying down and rushes Ian over to the ATV. “Thanks. You helping take care of this?”

“Yeah,” Owen answers. Looking around wildly to see where the rest of the pteranodon flock is headed, Ian notices a large, thin body lying where he was a minute ago and suddenly realizes what happened to the huge pterodactyl. The animal lies with dust swirling around it, blood oozing out of its chest, and Ian connects the sight with the gun in Owen’s hand.

“Look, you’ve done this before, right?” Claire asks. Her eyes are frenzied and she looks desperate. “Look, Owen’s helping ACU get these animals under control, but I have two of my nephews that I really, really need to find and if you could help him while I—”

“Whoa, you okay?” Owen cuts her off, staring at Ian.

“He’s fine,” Sarah answers for him, and Ian’s realization that blood from his claw-mark injuries must be the thick liquid getting into his eyes is immediately followed by a bewildering sheepishness. “What, are you just shooting all of them? Not trying to get them back in the aviary or anything?”

“I can help you,” Sarah insists. “Let me on, get me a tranquilizer gun or something. Do you have one? These animals don’t have to die.”

“Hop on,” Owen answers, moving forward on his seat. “Claire, give ‘em some room.” Claire moves closer to Owen, who digs around in a knapsack and produces a gray tranquilizer gun, thrusting it backward at Sarah. She climbs onto the seat behind Claire, grabbing the gun, and Ian instinctively follows, holding onto her waist. It takes them a few seconds to fit onto the limited amount of space, but they work it out, Ian and Sarah sitting sideways to fit better.

“Hang on, is that one all right?” Claire suddenly asks, looking to the ground beside Sarah’s feet.

Ian and Sarah see what she’s pointing out at the same time. Sarah lets out one of the sympathetic “Oh”s that usually indicate that they’ll soon be responsible for another animal if she gets her way, and she leans down and picks up, with great effort, the baby triceratops that she was just punching a giant pteranodon to save. The bulky creature wriggles its forelegs and squeals, and even Ian feels a pang in his heart when he notices the deep claw marks down its back and the obvious panic in its eyes.

Sarah cocks the tranquilizer gun and holds it up with one arm, and plunks the little trike across her and Ian’s lap with the other, protectively wrapping her arm over its back to hold it still. “Ready to go,” she says.

“Sarah—” Ian begins, moving the baby’s leg so it’s not so uncomfortable on his.

She looks up and gives him the raised-eyebrow look that simultaneously says that she’s thoroughly made up her mind and asks him if he really thinks it’s wise to question her judgment. “I’m not stopping at the animal hospital,” Owen says, looking back as he twists ATV’s handle and revs the engine.

“You don’t need to,” Sarah yells over the vehicle’s roar. “I’ll patch her up myself. Let’s go.” She grips the baby trike even harder, and it stills and nuzzles its little beak into her shirt. Ian notes this and sighs. At this rate, it’s distinctly possible that Sarah will want to take the little animal home with them.

“Ready?” Without waiting for an answer, Owen throttles the ATV forward and the four of them—well, five—speed off into Jurassic World.

Yet another TV spot has dropped upon us, and this one is raptor-centric! http://www.forbes.com/sites/benjaminmoore/2015/05/21/jurrassic-world-tv-spot-chris-pratt-raptor-names/

Owen introduces the raptors by their names to the kids while everyone is still unscathed and calm. He says that Blue is the beta, and when Gray asks who’s the alpha, Owen says, “You’re looking at him, kid” with this look on his face. You know, this really makes me uncomfortable. First he sleazily hit on Claire and now he’s referring to himself as an ‘alpha’– guys, I think Owen might be a closet pickup artist.

The new tagline “Our park, their world” flashes on the screen as Owen does this (apparently Reddit Guy was right about this shot happening, and we’ve been waiting for that confirmation for quite a while). That looks like a downright draconian headpiece, and he’s getting a bit too close to the mouth area. Any other human would get a thorough and complete chomping for doing either of those things, let alone both. Better watch your back, Owen– that Star Lord charisma can only get you so far.

Indominus chases the boys out of the forest. I’m beginning to think the Gyrosphere attack scene happens, they abandon ship (a bit late if you ask me), I. rex chases them and that ends with them jumping down the waterfall. If Gray doesn’t get thoroughly Tim the Human Piece of Toast-ed after all of that happens, then wow, he might be more than an annoying twerp after all.

Another purely beautiful and scary TV spot came out. This makes #15:

You can guess from the start why I love this so much. That’s right, it’s got a precious tiny raptor baby! And she’s hatching!

(Edit: this is the I. rex. I have realized my mistake.) Aww, she’s just hatched and already she’s learned to tap her claws ominously like a true villain– they grow up so fast! I don’t know which one this is, but if this is in the actual movie, then it might confirm my greatest dream and hope for the future. We could get a full scene of Owen raising the Raptor Squad from hatchlings and taking care of his babies from birth. We could get an entire scene of cuddly raptor babies thinking Owen is their mother. If this is a thing that actually happens– I’d pretty much given up on it until now– then the movie is perfect already in my eyes. I will have no complaints whatsoever. Give me my baby raptor scene and I will huddle up with it in the corner and never say a word against the movie. I mean, there’s a whole plot and 14 years of waiting and memorable characters and everything, but look at her widdle baby claws!

On a related note, here’s the newest promotional art from Lego Jurassic World:

“Hee hee! In the source material, this is the last time any of us smile!”

That’s all the new footage from there; we also got a short clip of Masrani seeing I. rex for the first time.

The first thing he says is, “You didn’t tell me she was white.” Oh my gosh, Simon, you can’t just ask people why they’re white.

Claire says her, “Think it’ll scare the kids?” line and he responds with, “It’ll give the parents nightmares.” And he thinks this is a “fantastic” thing. For shame, Masrani, here I thought your inner good guy was shining through. I guess the self-awareness comes later, and if not, there’s a special spot in a dinosaur’s jaws reserved just for him. I love the way this scene looks. It’s very quiet and suspenseful in a way that a meeting between two ominous scientists should be, the pacing is just right and I can hear some notes of the Giaccino score in the background that I duly approve of. Two thumbs up.

The last video is Chris Pratt goofing off in the visitors’ center set, doing that weird dance again and singing the theme song. The cast, apparently, had gone stir-crazy by this point. I can’t say I blame them.

Well, I felt like doing some art today, so I did. In no way, shape or form am I good at drawing, but I felt like doodling so I drew a cartoon about the prehistoric animal that’s easiest to draw (and one of the coolest pre-dinosaurs if you ask me). The scan didn’t come out perfectly, but here’s my magnum opus, Things Dimetrodon Hates:

And finally, I did it again. I abused some coloring sheets, this time off the Lego site:

Oh, and look at the little cutie that hatched in my backyard this week!

He’s so tiny– he’s starting to grow his first coat of feathers and started vocalizing just the other day. It’s like there’s a little baby dromaeosaur right on my fence. I’ve named him Buckbeak.

All right! It’s time for another trailer from possibly the best video game ever, Lego Jurassic World! I’m going to sound really sarcastic and annoyed here, but that’s just how I express my happiness. I’m really, really pumped for this game.

Before I cover the trailer, here’s the newest piece of promotional art for the game:

OK, first of all, no. No. No, Spinosaurus does not get to be the iconic dinosaur who strikes the iconic roaring pose through the iconic gates. I like the rest of the art and the game, but I will not accept this. Second, I’d like to applaud this artist otherwise, because in a single image, they’ve managed to perfectly show the complete scope of what an utter dunce Amanda Kirby is. Even Sarah Harding is running from the Spino, and if even Sarah Harding knows to run from something, you know it’s something seriously dangerous. Yet Amanda trips and lies sprawled on the ground, looking only mildly disturbed. Perfectly captured.

Aww, he doesn’t take his sunglasses off. 😦 I like how Ellie still has her fern, though. Study those vein arrangements, Ellie!

OK, I’ll admit I was wrong about the way this game handles this scene. They kept the wonder in it, I’ll give them that. It wouldn’t be a Jurassic Park game if we didn’t feel all Spielbergy at some point, after all.

“The %$*& you lookin’ at, Grant?”

Here’s our first look at a Lego compy, the coloration of which I absolutely adore. Also Eric Kirby, the least adorable kid in these movies. Just in case anyone cared.

Hooray for more Lost World! In this scene, Sarah befriends the gentle Pachycephalosaurus after setting it free from its captors, along with the other herbivores. Surely such benevolent creatures will forgive, forget and cause no damage! What an example Mother Nature will set for us with these animals. Surely they would never–

–yep, thought so.

You have my full attention!

Here it is, folks. The most beautiful thing you’ll see all day. A newborn baby velociraptor jumps out of its egg while amniotic fluid sprays everywhere, much like a gorgeous mermaid leaping from the ocean with sea spray showering her in a watery halo. Ian Malcolm and Henry Wu make priceless expressions of disgust, and all of this drama plays out in Lego form. Let us join hands and celebrate this moment together.

Of course they had to include this, and somehow they made it even funnier. Note the bottom right corner, where it appears that Sarah is observing her imminent doom with a magnifying glass while Nick tries to get her to run. Will this game have a running joke where Sarah does even stupider stuff than she does in the movie? I hope it will.

–begin All-Caps Feelings Rant; this blog is occasionally where I post about my personal feelings because I don’t have a Tumblr–

WHY DID THEY HAVE TO INCLUDE THIS. I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS SCENE IN THE MOVIE. THEY CUT FROM SILLY T. REX TO MAKE RAPTOR DASH CRY.

IN THIS SCENE. MY PRECIOUS SAD MATHEMATICIAN IS WATCHING HIS GIRLFRIEND AND DAUGHTER ABOUT TO GET EATEN. HE IS SO TERRIFIED AND NO ONE LISTENS TO HIM WHEN HE SAYS NOT TO MOVE. MY DARLING BABY IS WATCHING HIS DARLING BABY ABOUT TO MAYBE GET T. REX EATEN. LOOK AT THAT EXPRESSION OF HORROR ON HIS FACE. LOOK AT HIM HE IS SO SCARED. THIS ONE TINY SECOND OF FOOTAGE JUST BROUGHT BACK SO MANY FEELINGS AND THEY CAPTURED THE HORROR SO WELL EVEN THOUGH IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY AND I SJDKU;VNSJKFHBFKD STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT

–end Feelings Rant; this is my life and these are my choices–

In the background we can see Lego Roland and Ajay, who may be running but in this frame appear to be strolling along side by side, making idle chitchat.

Oh hey, look what hatchet the game just dug up! This is a totally safe scene to toy around with and it’s definitely not material that’s ever caused gigantic flame wars even 14 years after its release, no siree!

*through tightly gritted teeth* Here is a very fun fact. This seems to refer to pterosaurs, and pterosaurs are not flying dinosaurs. Because pterosaurs were not dinosaurs! Isn’t learning fun?

What happens to the pig? Is he gonna eat the pig?

…I mean, sure, okay, they are trained attack dinosaurs for the specific purpose of controlled killings, and they do seem to be trained to hold back from eating the pig until Owen gives the green light. I guess it’s not too bad to let them hunt live animals under those conditions. But wouldn’t letting them learn to hunt, attack and kill living creatures with great efficiency on a regular basis be just a teensy bit dangerous? I could be wrong, but I really wonder how well this was thought through.

All right! Lego Mosasaur! All hail Queen Lego Mosasaur! I love what we’ve seen so far of her underwater area, it seems very dark and ominous. It’s quite an appropriate lair and revenge-plotting location. On another note, I seem to recall that another red-haired female scientist, Dr. Sorkin, dies in a Mosasaur tank much like this one in Jurassic Park The Game. Hmmmmm.

Yay for tiny babies! This one appears to be on a rampage along with the I. rex. Gotta learn to kill all humans somehow, right?

Owen does a wicked motorcycle swerve along with Barry while a voice-over in his voice says, “That thing out there, that is no dinosaur.” (What is it, then, a fern?) I’m assuming he’s talking about the I. rex, but if he were discussing a Pteranodon or Mosasaur, I’d be very proud of him. He’d be much more correct about what is and isn’t a dinosaur than the rest of this trailer.

And that’s the end of it! Wow, that somehow made me even more hyped for this game. I didn’t even know that was possible! Next I’ll review the newest Raptorpass video, either tonight or tomorrow. It’s a doozy.

You probably know me well enough to guess what I’m gonna talk about first. If you’re new here, I tend to obsess a bit over baby dinosaurs; I’ve waited a long time for a good look at the dino babies of Jurassic World, and now I need to have A Moment. The spot gives us a shot of baby dinosaurs in the Gentle Giants Petting Zoo! Babies! Babies! BABIES!!!!!

Look how tiny and precious they all are! The little tiny apatosaur who wraps his little neck around the boy who runs up and hugs him! That little boy loves dinosaurs so much he can’t help himself from hugging that one! And it hugs him back! And all the little Gallimimuses scampering around and trying to play with everyone! The teeny baby triceratops following their handlers like little puppies! I think I’m having actual heart palpitations right now– I just wanna pick them up and hug them and wrap them in little knitted blankets and snuggle with them forever! Aagh, I can’t handle this, it’s so cute. It’s my new favorite trailer shot and it just might be my favorite part of the movie. Also, why are all the handlers dressed exactly like Muldoon? Is it this franchise’s version of red shirts?

Seriously, though, here’s a clearer version. The little apatosaur settles its head on the boy’s shoulder and closes its eyes. It’s hugging him back. No one can convince me otherwise.

In an extended version of the adorable shot from Spot #4, Claire and Owen get shippy in the jungle:

I’m not entirely sure why their nearly taking a trip down the T. rex Throat Tunnel of Terror together makes me want them to kiss so much, but it does.

Edit: I knew this reminded me of something. Now I know what:

You’ve gotta admit, there are parallels. Both pairs are grudgingly polite at best and adversarial at worst, right up until the point when they nearly get killed together– and then they’re adorable and squee-worthy. Are near-death experiences the best way for couples to bond in these movies? This universe must have some really grim dating sites.

And there’s a longer shot of when Owen tells Claire (completely unnecessarily, I think she’s actually past the Ellen Ripley horizon by this point) to get the kids somewhere safe:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again– why is everyone but Claire so clean?! I guess she needs to get nice and grunged up to show her transition from cleanliness and order, but seriously, how is it possible for everyone to be mostly clean but her? Whatever. You get those battle scars, Claire.

More pretty Gyrosphere scenery. I really feel like this scene will mostly be Trevorrow showing off his cinematography chops, and I’m totally okay with that. What would a Jurassic Park movie be without wondrous, peaceful, visual-based dinosaur sequences?

JP3, that’s what.

Here’s a panoramic shot of the lagoon and the woman who says the Mosasaur is “a little shy”. She gon’ get ate.

In the control-room argument scene before stuff starts to go down, Claire yells, “We are not in control here!” and continues to set impossible beauty standards for anyone who wants to cosplay her.

And that’s it. Really I just did this as a full post so that I could properly express my many baby-related feelings. But how cute is that?! I seriously hope there’s an extended petting zoo scene in the movie. Even with just a minute-long scene, I’d die happy.

Welcome

Hi, I'm Raptor Dash. I love Jurassic Park and hope to be a paleontologist someday. Until then, I write about dinosaurs. This is where I publish my fanfics, including ones I don't post on other sites. I also recommend fanfics by other talented JP writers and update on Jurassic World news.